Mike Loukides starts by talking about how much he adores Android because it is open, the ends with this:

The price of openness may well be letting vendors break stuff. And I suppose I’m willing to pay that price. But I don’t have to be happy about it. I hope Google can figure out how to exert some control over what vendors do with Android; that would be good for the whole community. AT&T and other carriers are not helping Android, or themselves, by turning a great product into a second-rate one. And maybe I’m becoming soft in my old age, but I now understand what Apple fans hate about Android.

I’d say he still doesn’t fully understand Apple fans. To understand Apple fans, you must first understand why this statement by Loukides is so absurd to Apple fans:

[…]at one point had a whole stack of Android phones sitting on my desk[…]

That statement right there is a better example of everything that is wrong with the Android market, it’s more than just crap UI and carrier logos. It’s about every facet of Android and the market that it has created.

You can argue all day long that:

[…]if Apple didn’t exist to be teach us what great design was, we’d certainly be happy with Android. Way, way better than any of the feature-phones I’ve used in the past.

Sure, and I thought my Treo and BlackBerry were pretty great before iPhone. The fact isn’t that Android would be amazing if iPhone didn’t exist — it’s that Android still can’t come close to the polish of the iPhone after existing for 6 plus years. To say that an Android phone is “way, way better” than old feature phones, is setting the bar so low that it’s not even a valid comparison.